Defenders Magazine

Florida's Besieged Manatees

Deadly boat strikes and habitat loss threaten this quirky marine mammal.

By Maryalice Yakutchik

On this misty winter morning, like countless others over the last 20-plus years, Ranger Wayne Hartley conducts roll call. Threading his canoe through a three-quarter-mile pristine spring run at Blue Spring State Park in central Florida, he takes sips of coffee between paddling and rattling off the names of dozens of the 153 manatees he recognizes by scar pattern and personality.

He greets Delain and Lilly, then Carl, Milton and Chuck. He encounters Precious, Bartram, Tonto, Wanda. Next is Deep Dent, Anvil, Mossback, Moldy and Mangle.

All the scars Hartley uses to identify the manatees were inflicted by the hulls and propellers of speeding boats. All too often, these 10-foot-long, 1,000-pound, primordial-looking marine mammals simply can’t swim fast enough, or far enough, to spare themselves from boat strikes.

He looks for Success. Success, says Hartley, was the first calf of Sweetgum, who lost many pregnancies. As a 1-year-old, Success was struck by a boat and injured so severely she looked deformed. At 2, still nursing, she was hit again in exactly the same place. Hartley counted four bones sticking out of her side. For years, he’d get calls from park visitors alerting him of a dying manatee. He’d go have a look and, seeing it was Success, assure the visitors that she wasn’t dying. "In fact," he’d add, "she looks pretty good. For her."

He points out Georgia, describing her as "a person dressed as a manatee." Raised in Sea World, she seeks out people to the point of becoming a pest. Visitors to Blue Springs are not permitted to touch manatees or swim with them. If a manatee sneaks into a designated swimming hole -- as Georgia is apt to do -- the rangers clear the area. Many a day, swimmers stand shivering on the shore as Georgia eyes them imploringly.

Georgia may be seeking people, but the vast majority of manatees in this area congregate above the spring at the mouth of the St. Johns River seeking warmth: The water there stays a balmy 72 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. These warm-blooded tropical creatures have been pushed to the northern extreme of their range by human encroachment on their natural habitat, and they risk cold stress in waters that dip much below 70 degrees.

Just 11 manatees were in Blue Spring when Jacques Cousteau paid a visit in 1970. When Wayne Hartley arrived in 1990, there were 35. The head count today, at the conclusion of a languid two-hour float trip, is 80. A record total of 115 spent the winter last year, including 12 calves. The Blue Spring population, which basks in warm, protected waters, is healthy, Hartley confirms, and estimated to be growing at a rate of seven percent annually. "If all of the rest of the manatees [in Florida] were doing as well as those at Blue Spring, then we would be on the road to recovery," Hartley says. Scientists divide the endangered Florida manatee population into four relatively distinct sub-populations: northwest, southwest, Atlantic coast and St. Johns River — which includes Blue Spring — though the exact number in each region is unknown. Manatees are notoriously difficult to count. They spend much of their time in turbid water or resting on the bottoms of deep canals, which makes them impossible to see.

Although computer modeling will no doubt yield the best estimate of population, a coordinated series of aerial surveys and ground counts -- known as the statewide synoptic survey -- has been conducted most years since 1991. The January 2001 survey resulted in a count of 3,276 -- the highest to date. (The previous record was 2,639 in 1996.) But survey results are wildly variable -- last year’s survey was done during the best of conditions -- and scientists agree that the numbers do not reflect actual population trends. In other words, a big number one year does not translate into big population growth.

"The upper St. Johns River and the northwest populations are doing nicely," says Jim Velade of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Manatee Population Status Working Group. "There is good population growth in those segments and excellent survival rates. When you eliminate boats and protect an area, the manatees will come into these areas. It’s pretty incredible to see how animals respond to protected areas."

The Sirenia Project, a federal research program under the auspices of the U.S. Geological Survey, identifies more than 1,400 animals in its scar catalog, also known as the Manatee Individual Photo-Identification System, or MIPS. Sirenia senior biologist Bob Bonde has spent many winters snorkeling in the clear water off of King’s Bay in Crystal River, photographing and sketching some 400 manatees by their scar patterns. Like Hartley, he knows many of the animals at a glance. Sirenia’s sighting records number 22,000. "I think it’s the largest mammal database that exists anywhere," says Cathy Beck of Sirenia.

Macabre as it may seem for researchers to identify creatures by their human-inflicted wounds, the method enabled them to determine there was site fidelity among manatees. A new emphasis of the scar catalog is collecting life history information. "We’re beginning to look at scar acquisition rate now." Beck says, "We’re trying to learn more about where the scars are acquired and at what time of year."

Yet the picture at Crystal River and Blue Spring tells only part of the story of the status of Florida manatees. These populations comprise only about 16 percent of the manatees in Florida. The remaining 84 percent -- the southwest and Atlantic coast subpopulations -- are not faring quite as well, says FWS’s Velade. Population modeling suggests a stable or slightly declining stock. Scientists agree that it’s simply too close to call.

"From a Fish and Wildlife standpoint, we have to clearly demonstrate we can control the threats to the manatee population," says Velade. "We’re not there yet. If we saw some indication that manatee protection areas were reducing the number of watercraft-related deaths, we’d breathe a big sigh of relief. But we’re not seeing that. So we need to improve coverage (by increasing protection areas), increase enforcement and improve compliance."

Researchers simply don’t know the southwest population well enough to calculate survival rates and model population parameters. "Southwest Florida is a kind of a black hole," Velade says. "But information suggests that the population there is similar to what we’re seeing on Florida’s Atlantic coast."

Whether the manatee population is growing, stable or declining is something of a moot point as far as Wayne Hartley is concerned. "What business do we have hacking up animals like this just for fun, whether they’re endangered or not?"

Hartley hails Lunatic, then Howey. Howey dumped Hartley out of his canoe 15 years ago. Not on purpose, of course. After accidentally bumping the boat, Howey dove under it, flipping his tail and the canoe. It was the only time something like that happened in all his time here, Hartley says.

Until today. As he prepares to dock the canoe, Hartley says "Uh-oh!" Suddenly Hartley and I are flying and sputtering and reaching to hang onto what is now an overturned canoe. A manatee named Wanda had flicked her scarred tail when we drifted too close for comfort.

Chalk one up for the manatees.

Usually, it’s not humans who lose when watercraft and manatees collide. Manatees lose hunks of elephant-gray flesh, dense bits of bone and pieces of pectoral "steering" flippers. They lose their lives. Almost every manatee living in Florida’s waterways has a visible scar, if not a dozen -- adults and calves alike. At least one manatee, which eventually showed up for a necropsy in the pathology lab of the Florida Marine Research Institute, was documented as having as many as 50. But scars only hint at the real number of collisions and the extent of damage done to this endangered population by watercraft. Manatees die as often from the blunt trauma of impact with a hull as from getting sliced by a propeller -- an argument against the proposed non-solution of putting prop-guards on boats.

Not quantifiable are the numbers of animals whose immune systems are compromised by collisions, thus weakening them to disease or cold stress. Not measurable are the numbers whose reproductive success is affected.

According to state statistics, of the 273 manatee deaths in 2000, 78 were watercraft-related. Brevard and Lee counties, on the Atlantic coast, tied for the highest number, with 13 each. Seventy deaths were "undetermined," any number of which could be watercraft-related but were not proven as such. Cold stress claimed 14. "Other human-related causes" accounted for eight. Flood gate/canal lock accidents claimed eight more. Just 95 died of natural causes.

The picture was even bleaker in 2001. There were 325 deaths: Of that total, 81 were watercraft related (Lee County led with 23), and 110 were "undetermined." Cold stress claimed 32. Flood gate/canal lock accidents claimed one. Other human-related causes accounted for seven, and just 94 died of natural causes.

Although individual manatee deaths often go unnoticed, one in particular attracted a fair amount of publicity in 2001. Ragtail, a 2,500-pound pregnant female, was something of a celebrity before she was struck and killed in March by a boater speeding though the seagrass beds near Picnic Island in Hillsborough County. She had been pictured on the Save the Manatee Club’s website as one of five Tampa Bay manatees available for adoption, the organization’s main fund-raising effort. Hundreds of people had adopted Ragtail, whose name came from an earlier encounter with a boat propeller that slashed her tail in a handful of places.

Ragtail’s necropsy revealed 15 deep propeller cuts as well as broken ribs and shattered vertebrae.

In response to increasing human-related manatee mortality, the Florida Marine Research Institute is administering $200,000 appropriated through the state legislature for a Manatee Avoidance Technology program. The institute currently is reviewing proposals. One of those applying for research money is Edmund Gerstein, vice president of Leviathan Legacy in Boca Raton. His company already holds a patent on an acoustic device for boats that "warn" manatees of their approach.

"Over 11 years ago, we asked a very simple question," Gerstein says: "Why do we have animals hit repeatedly by boats? The standard belief was that boats are too fast and manatees, too slow and dumb."

Gerstein has challenged those beliefs and created no small controversy with his assertion that slow boats -- which produce a lower frequency sound than fast ones -- are actually harder for manatees to hear and locate, and thus more difficult to avoid. Slowing boats down is not a solution in and of itself, he asserts. Not unless those boats produce sounds in a frequency easily heard by manatees. "We need to give animals an opportunity to have acoustic information they can key off of," Gerstein says. "Its unbelievable, the resistance we’ve had. Everyone thinks it’s going to open the floodgates and boaters will go faster."

That’s not the only worry. Whether or not the device proves beneficial for manatees, a number of scientists express concern about introducing more artificial sounds into an already noisy underwater environment.

Organizations concerned about manatee conservation have, however, opted to make noise in court. A national coalition of 19 environmental and animal protection groups, including Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society and Save the Manatee Club, filed in 2000 one suit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Secretary of the Interior and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and another suit against the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Both suits charged the agencies with failing to protect Florida’s endangered manatee population.

Both cases were settled, the former in January 2001 and the latter in May 2001. The defendants agreed on 16 protection measures in 13 areas around the state. FWS agreed to create refuges and sanctuaries and establish new regulations that would apply to the permitting of new facilities in manatee habitats that impact boat traffic, including marinas, docks and ramps.

But the groups have not been satisfied with the agencies’ compliance with the settlements. "Absolutely nothing -- not a single thing -- that we have won in our settlement talks with state and federal agencies has been implemented yet," says Patti Thompson of Save the Manatee Club. "The fact remains that we have not been able to implement anything. It’s all paper and no action."

Thompson spent much of October in state administrative hearings about the manatee protection rules in Brevard County that were signed off by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and then subsequently challenged by a boating group called Standing Watch. "They just want to go as fast as they want to go wherever they want to," Thompson says. "It’s the last frontier in Florida -- our waterways. But they’re killing and maiming manatees as a result, and it must be curtailed. The operation of their boats must be regulated.

"As long as we can hold the agencies’ feet to the fire, some good will come of it," she adds. "The time it takes is frustrating, but we’re certainly not going to back off."

In areas where manatees or boats -- or both -- are increasing, there are going to be more collisions, according to Kipp Frohlich, biological administrator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He advocates wise land-use decisions over heavy-handed enforcement: Carefully choosing the entry points of boat traffic means fewer speed zones and a less regulatory approach, he says. "I think enforcement is not the answer. If you could slow down all the boats all the time and somehow enforce that everywhere, you could reduce manatee-boat collisions, but is that the direction public policy wants to go? To make all of Florida one big slow speed zone?"

Among those who aren’t keen on the idea of blanketing the state with speed zones are fishermen. Their collective voice is powerful. Fishing in Florida is a $6 billion industry -- equal in economic impact to the state’s citrus industry. The Coastal Conservation Association of Florida (CCA) has 10,000 members, the majority of whom are saltwater recreational fishermen. Recently, the group formally requested that the state take manatees off its endangered list.

"We weren’t involved in any manatee issues until last winter when Save the Manatee Club filed its two lawsuits, wanting some 115 areas of the state to be severely restricted in terms of boating access or closed altogether," says CCA Executive Director Ted Forsgren. The CCA is dubious about the need for increased manatee protection in "excellent fishing areas," most notably in 67 square miles of slow speed zone in Lee County and more than 100 in Brevard.

"One reason why manatee deaths have increased is there are more manatees and more boats," says Forsgren. "The scientific evidence shows manatee abundance has increased over the past 25 years, not decreased. We think Save the Manatee Club is severely misrepresenting the situation and attempting to mislead the public. The club, with their extreme petitions and lawsuits, has created opposition by really infuriating boaters and anglers throughout the state -- natural allies to them. Fishermen who have been on the water for 15 years know that whoever is saying manatees are declining is not telling the truth. I think the lawsuit has backfired and has the potential to set back the whole process in conserving the manatees."

Conservationists disagree. "The simple truth is that conservationists for years tried the handholding approach and got nowhere," says Mike Senatore, litigation director for Defenders of Wildlife. "It became abundantly clear that the state and federal agencies were never going to voluntarily take the steps necessary to adequately protect the manatee. Litigation was our last resort."

It stands to reason that the more boats there are on the water, the more risk there is to manatees. But that simple fact was recently disputed in an internal FWS document that turned up as part of the federal lawsuits. Labeled "not for release," it states that if there are enough law enforcement officers patrolling the waterways, "then the number of boats on the water ... would largely be irrelevant."

But Eric R. Glitzenstein, a Washington, D.C., attorney who represented the coalition in the federal suit, disagrees.

"The vision they have -- an infinite number of boats and an infinite number of enforcement officers alongside manatees -- is one we’re deeply disturbed by and one that there’s no scientific or legal foundation for," Glitzenstein says.

"In their view, speed zones are all that’s necessary in order to address manatee conservation. In our view, speed zones are necessary, but not sufficient: We take a holistic view involving habitat protection and manatees’ biological needs that goes beyond a simplistic focus on slowing boats down. I think [the document] is a real warning sign, a smoking gun."

Laurie Macdonald, director of Florida programs for Defenders of Wildlife, agrees. "It’s irresponsible to think we could be adding thousands more docks and their associated traffic, pollutants and encroachment on habitat, and believe that will not impact manatees as well as a wide variety of other aquatic and coastal species," she says.

"Lack of adequate enforcement is currently a problem and, given budget restraints, enforcement may well be reduced. Why should we make our enforcement program and enforcement officers burdened with heavier loads when the right thing to do is to prevent problems in the first place?"

But the legal actions may be causing a backlash, says James "Buddy" Powell of the non-profit conservation group Wildlife Trust. The lawsuits were a catalyst for the boating and fishing industries to rise to a cause. "I’ve never seen the boating community and the manatee community so polarized as it is now," he says. "It’s almost become: I’ll one-up you; if you do this, I’ll get our lawyers and do that."

The action toward state downlisting, adds Powell, is a first step to downlisting manatees federally. "I don’t think they should be downlisted unless the threats are under control -- and they’re not -- and unless habitat is well protected," he says.

Scientists agree they don’t yet know the magic number of manatees necessary to preserve genetic diversity -- the number required for the population to successfully weather a couple of crises in a row, such as incidents of red tide or disease.

"There’s probably enough [individuals] to sustain things if everything stays the same, with things just perking along," says Roger Reep, associate professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "But you have to be prepared for disaster. I’d be more comfortable with twice the number counted in the latest aerial survey."

One such potential disaster looms in the not-so-distant future and has the scientific community scrambling for proactive solutions: the eventual shut down of antiquated power plants. Manatees on both coasts depend on the warm water discharge sites during cold snaps in the winter. Without these artificial refuges, vast numbers are at risk of death from cold stress. In fact, a whopping two thirds of the Florida manatee population spends winters at industrial warm water sites. About 700 animals congregate at two power plants in Brevard County, for instance. In summer, the herbivores run a gauntlet of speeding motorboats as they head back out into shallow rivers and seas to feed.

"I don’t think manatees are going to disappear today or tomorrow, but they occupy coastal waters where there are myriad human impacts," says John Reynolds, chairman of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission and an advocate of leaving manatees on the endangered list.

As a slow-breeding, large, long-lived species, manatees can’t recover as quickly from exploitation as cod, for instance, which produce 10 million eggs a year per female. Manatees have a single calf once every two to three years, at best. If an animal is getting struck by watercraft and seriously injured, Reynolds wonders what that does to normal hormonal cycles and physiology in terms of reproduction.

"I’m not trying to debate the merits of the lawsuits themselves," Reynolds says, "but a consequence of legal action is to shut down communication. I supported the settlement agreement. It made sense. I certainly think that the state and federal governments and conservation groups could be doing more to preserve habitat and wildlife. I think certainly the state and federal agencies in the past have taken more aggressive stands on manatee issues than they did recently. In wake of the lawsuit, I think the pendulum is swinging back, stirring up resentment and fear that various stakeholders’ needs and desires won’t be factored adequately into the equation. I hasten to add I don’t think that will happen." The conservationists’ and boaters’ interests are not as opposed as they appear, Reynolds insists. "They need to focus on where they come together and build on that, instead of on where they’re apart. A lot of data from long-term studies need to be analyzed and assimilated to help in the decision-making process.

We need to use good science to form rational decisions."

It may seem improbable that a contentious mishmash of opposed stakeholders could join forces and work together. But there’s hope, Reynolds says. The manatee itself is the poster child of improbability. "You look at them anatomically, and they’re a hodgepodge of little quirks and jury-rigged adaptations that work. I don’t know of any other species that has so many unusual features, internally and externally."

Maryalice Yakutchik is a freelance writer living in Monkton, Maryland.